Cav's Group - Closed (Page 16)

Stavros, I agree!  Using the 4.74 pace is just fine!  We're not sticklers here!

Erik,

I feel for those kids!! Around here it has been the opposite kind of even taking place - parents losing their children to suicide. Not your average run of the mill kids either, smart, popular, funny and busy kids taking their own lives. These types of tragedies tend to make us sit up and take more notice than usual and remember how frail life really is!!
One of the reasons why I started working on this feat to begin with. Life is soooo short and unpredictable. I don't want to be 60 and just working on my "Bucket List". When I am 60-70 years old I want to be still out there, doing what I love because you just never know. 

BTW... I just found out that I am going to be a "GiGi"...(too young and cute to be a GRANDMA!!) And the wee one - according to the sonogram is a GIRL!!  

~Tammy

Tammy I'm sorry to hear about the recent losses in your area, we've had one in the past week in my town as well (different from my district- I work about an hour away from where I live).  I couldn't imagine how horrible, as a parent, that must be.

On a happier note, congrats on the run and on the hill repeats and on making it down the hill!  I always loved going down hill and that love of speed will hopefully help me start riding up them regularly.  I lvoe to get out of the saddle and sprint full out down hill and then duck down behind the bars, stomach on my saddle.  I have yet to hit 60, but have hit the upper 50's and rarely have a ride where I don't go over 40.  I just love speed!

Hi all,
life has been too hectic lately. I barely had time to keep up my training log.

So, what is the final results? No word from Stavros and Eric. How did you do friends?

Tammie, about the bike handling skills, I will give one simple advice which may help you. The beginner bikers' first and foremost problem is always with "holding their line". An idiom frequently used in group rides. If somebody swerves right or left and simply cannot go straight other riders warn him/her to hold his/her line. This is because in a group ride it is too simple to fall or worse, make others fall with this kind of riding. Once you get the hang of it you will realize you can do ride faster and better. A very simple solution is trying to go on the white line of the road without ever going out of it. Probably at this point you will see that you cannot do it. But keep at it, once you are able to do it at all speeds, downhill or uphill you will be a better biker.

And of course big congrats on being on the way to "gigi"ness.

So, here are the results of our virtual 5k:

Rowdypaint (Pattie) - I think you said you were out Pattie?
RogerWilco (Burak) 20:21
Sicone (Stav) 27:27
Wax_On (Chris)
me (ferretracer-Erik) 26:04
TTucker (Tammy)  28:36
Neuronet (Eric)

Congrats to Burak!!  He had the fastest time (so far).  Way to go!!  I think Eric has a 5k this weekend, not sure.  Chris are you still in?  Overall, our times were good.  I'm not sure about age groups.  I'd be in the 35-39 (or 30-39).  Tammy, you're the overall female winner!!!

On another note, I've had back to back sinus infections (or the first never fully went away) and have not gone swimming in a month!  I need to get out there and I think I'm just going to go this week whether I am nose dripping a bit or not.  I have less than 2 months until my first tri.  I'm really happy about my running pace, my cycling will come as I ride more (how obvious is that philosophy?), as for swimming?  I just make sure I can do a bit more than the distance in the tri without stopping.

Put me at 40 minutes, not sure. Bad bad I've suddenly got insertional achilles tendonopathy have an appointment with PT. Tri in two weeks will probably be a bi, swim and bike no run. Very frustrating will write more later busy at work now...

Go Duke!

Edited by neuronet 2010-03-30 2:33 PM

Eric, how was your appointment? What did PT say?

Just saw dr yesterday, haven't gotten the appointment with the PT yet. I can bike and swim without much discomfort, luckily, so I've been doing that.

Got new shoes too mine were three years old.

Glad you can swim and bike at least!  I hoe the PT report isn't too serious, Eric.

Edited by ferretracer 2010-03-31 5:47 PM

I'm really busy at work so writing less.

Heel is feeling much better with ice and less activity on it, still need to see PT.

Man I am just awful with the run. I feel OK with the swim, I'm BOP with the bike but OK with my level of fitness for now, but I'm pretty much useless with the run. I set my heart rate zones, and I tried to do a Zone I/II run, and literally couldn't two weeks ago. When I ran for more than two minutes, my heart rate went above 150, which is upper limit for zone II. I tried changing my stride (running in a barrel, heel first but quick pressure shift to toe like I'm running inside a barrel).

This helped a lot. My HR immediately went down, and more importantly it just felt better, like I was hammering my heel less. Unfortunately, this mid- to toe-focused run puts more pressure on my achilles tendon and I started to feel heel pain at the insertion point into the heel. It got pretty darn bad after my 5k last week

Called Duke physical therapy, they were like see us next week. I told them I have a triathlon next week and they were very cool scheduled me for today at 2PM.

My heel is starting to feel a lot better with ice and such, but I also look forward to the PT suggestions. Normal stretching, like stretching my calves on stairs, tends to make it worse. The STrasberg sock made it much worse. IN other words, this ain't plantar fascitis.

Anyhoo, I think I'll just do the swim/bike in next week's olympic distance, and work on building up my incredibly lame run. I've been told that bigger guys (I'm 6' 4" and weigh about 200) tend to have particularly more problems if they switch to too forward-bearing weight on their run.  That I need to really take my time to develop my running form.

Well, my A-priority race isn't until October. Next week is meant to be a fun and mellow workout, basically a chance to do a cardio brick workout in the context of a race, at my favorite place for open-water swimming.

So, lots of frustration the past week, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Great video for swimming, very important:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8SEJpvZSOY

Part 2 is really good too.

Glad you are feeling better Eric. Even if you just do swim and bike it will be a great experience.

There is lots of time to October, you can ease into running by then.

Damn he doesn't even want me to bike right now

They did an ultrasound of my heel, not too bad but some inflamation they have a steroid patch on there now.

Oh well I'll keep swimming at the very least, and maybe sneak in a little biking.

Don't sneak in too much, Eric!  Unless you have rollers...harder to crash on them (though, I have done that).

It's been a month since I've gone swimming...I still have a touch of a cold and now...we are moving!  The house we are in was basically our "forever" house...unless this one came up and it happened to be in our range (which we didn't think was possible)...well, it came up, we looked at it last night and made an offer and they accepted it this morning!  Our house is officially being listed tonight...exciting and stressful!  And I missed a couple workouts...meant to ride and run today and also run last night, but life got in the way...but it's for good!

Hopefully I'll get a ride in tomorrow...

Great video, great tips. Thanks for sharing.

After the daylight adjustment, it is finally light till 19:00-19:10 so I can ride back home. That means commuting season is open

Today was my rest day but I commuted, what's your take on this? I really lazily spinned, and coasted wherever possible. Should I count it as training?

Hmmm...not sure about training, but why not?  It can help with form and does provide a bit of recovery spinning, I guess...you could put it a note in the workout mentioning it as commuting-or maybe find a spot where you could put commuting rides (that are non work out related) in the Sports section.

Not much going on here.  It's been about 5 weeks since I went swimming.  First it was the sinus infections and now we're moving!  It was a spur of the moment thing, but a house we have loved looking at for years and turned out to be in our price range!  So, I have a tri on May 22, but may not be able to do it depending on closing dates.  For now I'll concentrate on running since I have the Tough Mudder coming upon May 2nd and need to run 7 miles for that.  I will get out for the occasional bike ride as well.  Lucky thing about the move is that it is 5 houses and across the street away.

Good luck to all on your beginning of the season races!!!

Erik

Makes me feel a bit better about my ridiculously high stroke rate (was about 102/100m this morning!)

Congratulation on getting the house Erik!

Starting to sink in that I'm actually going to be doing my first tri in 2 weeks time.

Well, mentor groups are archived. Since, we lacked a mentor anyway I applied to one of the new mentor groups. It has been good to share so much sports-wise with all of you.

I hope to see you around and wish you all the best. I will check your logs for your races, I am really curious how will all of us do

Thanks Stav!  Good luck with the first tri!

It's looking like I may miss my first tri of the season (2nd ever) if our counter offer for our house is accepted.  Closing would be the same day.  But I'll take the house over a tri!  Plus, I haven't been able to swim for 5-6 weeks anyway!

I did get a 5.2 mile run in at a 10:23 pace and a 24 mile bike- middle 20 were a hard 20.  I didn't time it but based on the 2 mile warm up and cool down it may have been around 19 to 19.5 MPH.  I tried aero position for a while, but I have to set them better as I started to cramp up in my right shoulder/neck.  I had the bars too close as well as I was having some control issues.

Burak, Thanks for all your input here- I wish you all the best! 

I think I will keep posting here even if it ends up becoming a personal/ semipersonal blog post in the forums

Had a semi bonk day-semi because there was a 20 minute lull between the bike and run.  The bike was good, just went out to try out the aero bar positioning.  My shoulders felt much better with them wider apart, plus the arm rests were in a better position.  I think I'll move the seat a bit forward.  The run was good.  I was hoping to do hill repeats carrying a heavy bag, but it was too friggin heavy...my neighbor came along for the run and he laughed at me when I told him what I wanted to do...he said 'A punching heavy bag?'  I said, 'Yeah', his reply 'Dude, that's way to heavy'...this coming from a guy who had call backs for American Gladiators and who can do 60 pullups in 60 seconds...so I didn't feel too bad about not being able to do it!

So, the day after the semi bonk day I was going to try to break the 24 minute 5k barrier which is one of my goals for this year.  I was on pace after 2.4 miles.  I felt I was a bit sluggish at times, especially on the slight ascents.  I had some slight knee pain, but nothing major, I just ran through it. So, I was on pace to be right around the 24 minute mark.  I decided to pick up my pace as I was feeling good.  Well, 3 steps in, the slight dull knee pain turned in to a sharp pain and I had to stop...rats...I would have gotten it, too as my pace was around 7:48- 7:50 per mile.  Well, now I had this pain.  i iced it after the run and on Monday and Tuesday (and Wednesday) nights.  Tuesday I went to the chiro for my sciatic adjustment and mentioned my knee.  She checked it out and also taped it for me for a run later that night.  I was planning on going for a short, slow 1 mile run to see how it felt.  Well, it felt REAL good!  So after a 1/4 mile, I picked up my pace and just kept picking it up and maintained a high pace, keeping my gate low.  I ended up running the 2nd fastest 2 mile I had done since I started running again 18 months ago!  I did a usual 2 mile loop at a 7:22 pace!  My previous high back in March was 7:01, so it was darn close considering the slow start!  And, my knee felt fine!!  And feels fine today, too.  I am taking today off nad will ice again.

So, I made it to the pool tonight!  I did 200 and then 4x100 and I was winded!  I really need to get there 5-6 more times by May 22nd tri!  I want to do at least 600 each time and focus on getting to 600 yards in a row.  I did it a bit slower than my last swim in Feb, but not a whole lot! 200@ 4:40 and 100's at 2:18, 2:20, 2:18, 2:18.  Last swim they were in the low 2:10's and a couple in the low 2:20's.

My running is good- did a nice 9:23 pace for 3.75 miles with 6 hill repeats counted in that mix and working on my aero position.  I need to raise my seat a tad and move my left cleat so my inside of foot is not rubbing on the crank arm.

Also, things are going swimmingly with our move!  Waiting for results of inspection and radon testing on our house...all else is great!  May 7th for our new house and May 21st for this old house!